The Planets, a musical journey

[-Steph-]

Hi all,

first, let me congratulate all of you guys who work on Celestia main software and addons. It's really an amazing tool, and it allows me to do what I always wanted to do : travel through space, orbit giant planets, explore constellations...

I noticed some of you know Gustav Holst's orchestral suite "The Planets". That's not surprising when you get interested in space and solar system.
And that's also a good point as you will know what I mean when I'll talk about the musical journey I propose you.

Indeed, A few days ago, when I re-discovered Celestia, I couldn't help thinking about putting images and classical music together.

Here is the result : a small video I hope you will enjoy.

It's simply titled "The Planets", is 12min long for 60Mo (DivX)
Feel free to visit the small special Celestia page I put on my website too ( http://www.konnek-t.com/Connexion/celes ... ia-01.html )



Thanks again to the authors of the textures used in Celestia in this short film.

[ANDREA]

Veeeeery well done, appreciated.
I love the music/video clips mounting.
Have you used a .cel script to obtain the movemnts?
And what software to join video and music?
Bye and thank you

Andrea

[-Steph-]

Thanks Andrea.
No script was used, only natural motion of the bodies, and the "travel" feature.
Video editing in Adobe Premiere.

[ANDREA]

Thanks Andrea.
No script was used, only natural motion of the bodies, and the "travel" feature. Video editing in Adobe Premiere.

Very clever, the motion is absolutely smooth.
And good to know about Adobe Premiere, thank you very much.
Any intention to do something of this kind for, e.g. the Universe or so on?
All astronomy speakers like me would enjoy it.
Bye

Andrea

[abramson]

Very, very good. Thanks for sharing this, Steph.

Guillermo

[jdou]

It's a wonderful work !

Now, when I'll listen again "The Planets", sure, I 'll we see your movie.

Encore bravo.

jdou

[trenner]

Hello
I've downloaded this and tried to run it three times, but I keep getting "downloading error codec". Would anyone know what the problem might be?

Terry Renner

[-Steph-]

Terry, you need at least version 5.1 DivX codec.
The audio is in PCM format, I believe this is a standard codec for Media Player.

[cpotting]

That was a really good. I enjoyed it very much and thought you matched the images and the music wonderfully. I particulary liked your use of nearly-lined-up moons.

It must have taken quite a bit of time to put that together. Thanks for the effort.

[buggs_moran]

Absolutely beautiful Steph. Thank you so much for sharing. It has been a while since I've heard Holst and I'd forgotten how good it was. What's next Haydn's 'The Creation'? I am not a Creationism believer, but Haydn's composition is beautiful and apropo to a night of stargazing. Chet Raymo brought this up in his book "An Intimate Look at the Night Sky", which is great for beginner astronomers (and amateurs as far as I am concerned). Raymo tells us that Haydn searched out Herschel (who among other things, discovered Uranus & the "universe of galaxies" idea which was built on Kant's island universes) and was supposedly so inspired when he looked through the telescope that he wrote the music...

[buggs_moran]

Of course now that I started thinking about this...I must double post because these would also make good Celestia videos...

Classical
Richard Strauss "Thus Spake Zarathustra" of course...

Rock
"Major Tom" by Peter Schilling
?€?Space Oddity?€

[maxim]

Hihi, VERY nice!

A pity that the tracks are interrupted so soon.

Anyway, Celestia video capturing looks much more like illustrations than like 'the real thing' (whatever that means) - too bright, too sharp ... . BTW, I discovered that the atmosphere horizon rendering breaks shadows and texturing (example: Saturn) . Anybody ever mentioned this bug?

Wonder if this gem can be improved by using smoothing, noise and lens focussing filters?

maxim

[-Steph-]

Thanks guys!

A pity that the tracks are interrupted so soon.

I agree, but I had to make the decision not to make an hour long movie

too bright, too sharp

Compared to what? Don't forget that most of the impression you have of these planetes (maybe excluding Mars) is several years and decades old. This means using years or decades old imaging hardware. Have a look at gulf war 1 footage for example and feel how old it can look

[Guckytos]

Very, very beautifull work!!

I really loved the show.

Don't want to know how long it took you until it was this good

[maxim]

Compared to what? Don't forget that most of the impression you have of these planetes (maybe excluding Mars) is several years and decades old. This means using years or decades old imaging hardware. Have a look at gulf war 1 footage for example and feel how old it can look

Compared to common impression (Well, my at least).
It may be driven by SciFi Movie visuals, but apart of that, you never have only sharp objects at infinite depth of view, sharp horizons all around planets ...
Not to forget that lighting conditions out there are absolutely extrem, so I don't believe on such /clear/ views.

In the end, seeing celestia not as a simulation but as a movie, these where the first things that came into my mind: too clear, too less noisy, too sharp, too illustrative-like, too bright ...

maxim

PS: The orbit videos that the shuttles made also aren't so /super-sharp/. You can still see them every night on TV here.